Losing You
by toxic-blur
Summary: When one of Rachel Berry's classmates is involved in a fatal accident, she faces the realization of just how much they meant to her.


A/N: This is more than likely as far into depressing territory as I'm going to ever get. I haven't read a lot of Faberry stories, so I'm not sure if anyone has done something like this already. But, yeah. Hope you guys like it.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Glee, but I do own approximately half a box of Reese's Puffs. :)

A quick slam of her car door and Rachel Berry was making tracks across the McKinley High School parking lot. Her bag was slung over her shoulder and a few books that she'd hurriedly nabbed on her way out the door were haphazardly tucked under one arm. Her other hand was occupied by a shining red apple; Rachel's well-meaning if not slightly trivial attempt at not allowing her healthy lifestyle to be derailed just because she had missed her daily morning workout. Rachel couldn't remember the last time she had overslept her alarm, but here she was, losing a purple ballet flat halfway across the parking lot, quietly muttering insults at herself for being so careless. She clenched her books tightly to her chest as she made her way through the school's entrance, hoping beyond all else that her routinely tardy first period teacher hadn't picked today to be punctual.

The second Rachel was through the doors, she knew something was amiss. Too many students and teachers were still in the hallways. As Rachel looked around at the sea of distraught faces, her stomach lurched with the realization that something terrible must have happened. All thoughts of alarm clocks and lateness vanished from her mind as she carefully maneuvered through the crowd and over to a very somber-looking Tina and Mike.

Rachel took in their faces before she tentatively began to speak. "Tina. Mike. What.. what happened? I know it must be horrible, everyone is so upset." Her eyes shifted briefly in the general direction of the sound of sobbing that was echoing down the hallway. "Please just tell me what happened."

Tina opened her mouth and took a breath, but then she looked over at Mike as the tears started to flow down her cheeks. Mike wrapped an arm around her and pulled her tight against his chest, briefly making soothing shushing sounds and rubbing her back before his eyes met Rachel's. His face was pained, like he regretted having to say the words. "Rachel, someone died last night."

Rachel's eyes widened. "W-was it a teacher or a student?"

Tina's tears grew into sobs at the question, and Mike clutched her tighter to him. "Rachel, it was- it's Quinn. Quinn is dead."

Rachel's eyes glazed over with tears and her face was awash with disbelief and horror. Her body went slack for a moment and her hand released the apple she hadn't even remembered she was still holding. Rachel watched as it started to roll down the hallway, and then wordlessly she walked away, following it. She couldn't think of what she was doing; it barely even registered with her that she was moving. She just followed her apple down the hallway until it suddenly came to rest by the foot of a very sullen Brittany. The Cheerio had tears of her own on her cheeks, but they seemed secondary in importance to those of the girl wrapped tightly in her embrace. They were collapsed on the floor against the lockers, Santana's face nestled into Brittany's clavicle, deep sobs emanating from her shaking body. Rachel recognized the heartbreaking sob as the one that had briefly grabbed her attention moments earlier. She stared at the girls as though entranced; tears were streaming down her cheeks but she couldn't feel them, she just watched Santana weep into Brittany's shirt until she was shaken back into reality by a hand on her shoulder.

Rachel swiveled around slowly and took in the wrecked face of Finn Hudson. He looked as though he had been crying every bit as hard as Santana, but that the tears had just refused to flow anymore, in spite of the desperate need for them. If this were any other day, Rachel would walk away from Finn. They hadn't spoken since their break-up, and Rachel had made peace with it. But on this day, with her heart feeling on the verge of collapse, she followed Finn into an empty corridor and waited to hear the rest of the gut-wrenching details that surely awaited her.

Finn took in Rachel's broken expression. "So, you heard? About.. Quinn."

Rachel slowly nodded her head and her lip started to quiver. "I.. I don't know what happened. I just know that she's..." She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence. She looked into Finn's eyes, searching for answers that she wasn't sure she wanted. "What happened to her?"

Finn breathed in and out a few times, looking pained to even do so. "It was a car crash. Last night around eleven. We don't know why she was out. But a drunk driver ran a red light and struck her from the side. She- she was alive when the paramedics got to her, but she had so much internal bleeding, they- they couldn't save her."

Rachel felt her knees buckle and she grasped onto Finn's arm to steady herself. He wasted no time in pulling her close to him, holding her there until the sobs came. They stood that way for a length of time that neither of them could have put a number on. She cried into his sweatshirt and he ran his fingers through her hair, trying his best now to be stoic for Rachel's sake. Eventually, Figgins' voice broke through the din of sobs and sniffles with the announcement that classes would not be held for the day, and something about grief counselors being available tomorrow. Rachel wiped her face on her sleeve and looked up at Finn. She needed to know that he was going to be okay. Finn just nodded. He always could discern her worried eyes before she even uttered a single word.

Rachel tried to give him a supportive smile, but she faltered. Instead, she rose up onto her tiptoes and kissed his cheek before hugging him goodbye and walking silently out the school's doors.

She made her way to her car and got in. She fumbled with her key and the ignition for what might have been forever. The dim feeling of triumph when she finally got the key in was cut short by a sudden terrifying scene that flashed through Rachel's mind. She saw the accident unfolding as though she had been there. She saw the impact; Quinn's fragile body being thrashed around. Blood. Lifelessness. Rachel's entire body was trembling as she clutched her steering wheel like it was the only thing keeping her from drifting away into the dark oblivion. It may not have been the smartest thing in the situation, but Rachel started her car and headed for home. As she parked at her front sidewalk she could barely remember the drive, but she didn't much care. She just needed to get into bed and pull the covers over her head.

As she made her way past her dads, who hadn't yet left for work, she vaguely registered their concerned voices questioning her early arrival from school and her disheveled, anguished appearance. She didn't bother to answer them, she just climbed the stairs to her bedroom and locked the door behind her. She crawled into her bed but couldn't even get herself under the covers before the tears resumed. She curled up into a tight ball and held her knees to her chest as the tears poured out of her even more unabashedly than before. Her mind was clouded in a fog of horrifying imagery and her heart was overwhelmed by such a profound sense of loss that she couldn't have possibly ever thought she was capable of feeling. She stayed in bed for hours, tossing and turning, sobbing and imagining all of the worst things.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. She reached out and grabbed her laptop, pulling it onto the bed next to her. She logged onto Facebook and pulled up Quinn's profile. She didn't know why, she just wanted to see her face again. There were so many posts on her wall, but to Rachel they all seemed to blur together. They were all heartbreaking, all mournful and full of regret and despair. Rachel clicked onto Quinn's photo albums and stared at every photo for a small eternity, taking in every aspect of the blonde's beauty, of her aura that seemed now to radiate so brightly that it was even evident in photos. Rachel was entranced. She finally came to the most recent album, which Quinn had simply titled "Glee." The brunette immediately burst into another fit of tears, as the second photo in the album was of Rachel and Quinn. It was from a rare day when they hadn't been at each other's throats. Kurt was taking candid shots and when Quinn saw the camera pointed in her direction, she nudged Rachel and said "SMILE!" as she threw an arm around Rachel's shoulder and beamed at the camera. Rachel had just enough time to put on a flashy grin of her own before Kurt snapped the photo. It had been a really, really good day. And now, Rachel was certain that she would remember it forever. Rachel saved the picture, just in case, and closed her laptop. She crawled under her covers this time, and shut her eyes tightly, trying to will away the ache in her chest and the devastating emptiness that was everywhere else.

She didn't know how she was possibly going to function at school the next day; but she knew she wouldn't be the only one. She felt horrible now about the times that she'd dared to imagine what it would be like if Quinn Fabray would just disappear from her life. Now that it had actually happened, she was quickly becoming all too familiar with the encroaching numbness that almost seemed like a welcomed reprieve from the wrecking pain. Rachel breathed in and out, and tried not to think of anything at all. She drifted off to sleep eventually, and when she awoke again it was the next morning. She had slept for almost twelve hours, which actually didn't surprise her. She was so drained from crying, she felt like she could have slept forever. And as the memories slowly crept back into her consciousness, Rachel suddenly thought that never waking up again sounded like a pretty sweet deal.

She gathered some clothes and got into the shower, letting the hot water woosh through her dark hair and soothe its way down her body. She felt temporarily revived as she stepped out and toweled off, but as she was putting on her shirt she thought she caught a glimpse of Quinn in the mirror. She pulled her shirt quickly over her head and looked back into the mirror, but there was no Quinn. Rachel shook her head. "Get it together, Rachel."

She headed downstairs and into the kitchen. Her dads were there, and the sympathetic looks on their faces told her that they knew. She raised her hand to gesture that she didn't want to talk about it, and they both nodded. Rachel sat at the table and tried to eat her breakfast, but the best she could do was a few bites of toast and half a mug of earl grey tea with honey.

As she kissed her dads goodbye, the vague thought flitted through her mind that she should probably grab her books. She dismissed it almost outright; she couldn't even remember where she had put them, and she decided she didn't much care. She retrieved her keys from the small table in the living room and gently clicked the front door shut behind her. When she opened her car door, she saw her bag and her other books sitting on the passenger seat. She recognized that it was good she had found them, but she couldn't say she really felt anything resembling relief. Rachel really couldn't say if she felt anything at all anymore.

Her commute to school was almost as easily forgotten as her drive home yesterday had been. The whole of her day, it turned out, was also pretty forgettable. She made it through her classes without erupting into tears, in spite of every teacher making it a point to say some lovely words in Quinn's memory, and remind them that grief counselors would be available to anyone who needed it. Rachel spent the day mindlessly doodling in her notebook and ripping off pieces of her binder cover. She couldn't conceive of participating; she could suddenly only conceive of soft, blonde hair and hazel eyes and unspeakable emptiness.

Classes were over, and without really thinking much about it, Rachel started down the hallway towards the choir room. She wasn't sure if Glee club would even be meeting, but regardless it felt like it was where she wanted to be. As she rounded the doorway, she found that she wasn't the only one with that notion. Every Glee member was sitting, rather unmoving, waiting. Mr. Schuester was seated on a stool near the piano, running his hand across his jaw, deep in thought. Rachel walked in and found an empty seat in the back. She hadn't felt like participating in any of her classes, and she didn't feel any differently about Glee.

After a few torturous minutes of silence, Mr. Schue finally spoke.  
"I know that we're all devastated by the loss of Quinn. And I know there's nothing I can say to make any of you feel any better about this. So I'm leaving it up to you all. If you want to hold off on Glee for awhile, that's what we'll do. Whatever you guys decide I'll completely support."

There was more silence as everyone took in his words and grappled with the choice. Finn was the first to speak. "Quinn would want us to sing."

There was a collective nodding of heads. Mr. Schue nodded knowingly and gave a half-smile. "Would any of you like to start?"

There was a darting of eyes and then Finn looked up at Rachel, who was staring at the seat next to her, her finger tracing the letter Q that had been carved into it on some other day, probably by Puck. She was jolted back into reality by the sound of her name.

"Rachel. Rachel, would you sing something?" Finn asked, his eyes almost begging.

She shook her head. "I- I can't. I'm sorry. Someone else should sing."

Everyone looked at each other. Rachel's fingertip began tracing the Q again. Mercedes was the next to break the silence. "Wait. So all of those other times you just had to make us listen to you belt out any and everything and now, when we're all too heartbroken to sing you can't find it in your heart to sing a damn thing?"

Rachel's eyes flashed with contempt and her cheeks felt hot.  
"Oh, and I'm not heartbroken, Mercedes? I'm not at all upset by this? Just because I wasn't Quinn's favorite person doesn't mean I didn't love her every bit as much as the rest of you, so no, I don't feel like fucking singing right now."

Almost everyone went slack-jawed at the outburst. Nobody knew how to respond. Rachel just sat there, one hand clutching the Q chair, the other hand attempting to cover her face as it contorted with the deluge of tears that overcame her.

Mr. Schue stood. "Rachel.."

Rachel knew that nothing anybody could say would ever make her hurt subside, and she felt terrible that even at a moment like this she still somehow managed to have all eyes on her. She felt like her grief was stealing the spotlight from Quinn's memory, and robbing her friends of their much-needed healing. So she did the only thing that felt right to her. She ran. Out of the choir room and down the hallway, with no particular destination in mind. A few turns later she found herself in the abandoned Cheerios locker room. Even Coach Sylvester was hit hard by the news of Quinn's death, and she had cancelled Cheerios practice for the next few weeks. Rachel slumped down against the bank of lockers and hugged her knees to her chest. The tears had stopped and stubbornly refused to start again, so Rachel shut her eyes and smacked her head against the locker that was behind her.

"Hey, I like my locker without dents, Berry."

The familiar voice startled Rachel. She couldn't look up fast enough. There in front of her, glowing like an angel in a white, flowing dress, was Quinn Fabray.

"Q-Quinn.. you can't be.. I... you're.."

"I know, Rachel. I'm dead. But you must have smacked your head against that locker pretty hard, because now you're seeing dead people." Quinn said with a smile and a shrug.

Rachel's face registered what was going on. "So I'm insane. I'm talking to a figment of my own imagination."

Quinn moved in closer to Rachel. "Quite possibly. But since your mind went through all the trouble of conjuring me up, is there anything you'd like to say? It might help you find peace. Or at least, you must think that, or I wouldn't be saying this right now, right?"

Rachel pressed her hand to her head. She must have a concussion.

Quinn smiled warmly. She was so beautiful. Rachel blinked a few times and opened her mouth briefly before closing it again.

"Come on, Berry. Out with it. I don't have eternity. Hm, actually, I guess I do. Take your time." And then Quinn just sat there in front of Rachel, glowing and looking like perfection. Rachel reached out to touch Quinn's cheek, and she vanished.

In an instant Rachel was on her feet. She screamed, "QUINN! Come back, please! Please come back, Quinn. I need you."

Rachel paced the locker room, frantic. She called out to Quinn a few more times, but to no avail. She stopped pacing and stood thoughtfully still for a moment. She knew what she wanted to say, but now Quinn was gone. She decided to say it anyway.

"Quinn, I don't know if you can hear me wherever you are. But if you can, I just wanted you to know that I'm so sorry I didn't try harder to be close to you. I'm going to regret that forever. I wish I could have just one more chance with you, because I would do so many things differently. I'd make you understand how much you meant to me; how much you'll always mean to me. I don't know if I even knew it until you were gone, but God, now it's so painfully clear. I love you, Quinn. I think I've been in love with you for a very long time. And I feel so stupid that it took losing you for me to realize it, but I do, I love you. Please come back, Quinn. Please come back to me.."

Rachel suddenly became aware of the sound of rhythmic beeping. Her eyes fluttered open and focused in on a drop ceiling and a bright light overhead. Her body ached all over. There was an IV taped to her left hand. Her right hand felt warm, and when she looked over to see why, she suddenly couldn't breathe. In the chair next to Rachel's hospital bed was a sleeping blonde girl. She was leaning forward with her head nestled into the bed and her fingers intertwined with Rachel's. Her face was obscured by the hair that had fallen over it, so Rachel gently released her hand from the blonde's grasp and used the back of it to softly stroke the sleeping girl's hair from her face. Rachel gasped. It was Quinn.

As Quinn sleepily reached out to touch the hand that was on her cheek, her eyes slammed open with the sudden realization. "Oh my god, Rachel. Thank God you're awake." She leapt out of the chair and kissed Rachel on the forehead.

Rachel stared up at Quinn and blinked back tears. "Are you really here, Quinn? Am I dreaming?"

Quinn looked momentarily perplexed before reaching out and seizing Rachel's hand again. "I'm really here, Rachel. We're both really here. There was an accident, sweetie. Do you remember it?"

Rachel's eyes darted around the room, trying to remember any detail. All she could recall was crushing loss and emptiness. She shook her head.

Quinn gave Rachel's hand a light squeeze. "You called me last night. Your car had broken down and you needed a ride home. I don't have any idea why you decided to call me and not Puck, or Kurt, or anyone else for that matter. But you sounded so scared and I couldn't leave you out in the dark by yourself, so I went and picked you up. Does any of this sound familiar?"

Rachel just shook her head slightly and watched Quinn.

"Okay. Well, we were just a few blocks from your neighborhood when a drunk driver smashed right into us. On your side. Rachel, I was so scared you were going to die. You were covered in blood, and I could tell that your leg was broken.."

Rachel suddenly became aware of the cast on her right leg, but she kept gazing at Quinn as she spoke.

"...so I called 911 and I stayed with you. They told me not to try to move you. It seemed like you were barely breathing, Rachel, and I was terrified. I kept asking the paramedics if you'd be okay, the whole way to the hospital I kept begging them to tell me they could fix you, but they just ignored me. Only one nurse came to speak to me while you were in surgery, and she said she wasn't sure if you were going to make it. I thought I was gonna lose you, Rach. I was so scared."

She leaned up to kiss Rachel's forehead again, and this time Rachel closed her eyes and basked in the feeling. Quinn smiled softly as she pulled away and continued her explanation. "While they had you in surgery I took your phone and called your dads- OH, your dads!" Quinn seemed to be shaken back into reality. "I'll be right back, I'll go get them."

"N-" Rachel started to protest, but it was no use. Quinn was already in the hallway, beckoning Rachel's fathers into the room.

Rachel's dads rushed into the room, and in an instant were at her bedside, showering her face with kisses and telling her how much they love her. Rachel flashed them both the best smile she could muster and said she loved them, too, but then her eyes were back on Quinn, who was quietly leaning against the doorframe in an attempt to give the three some semblance of privacy.

Rachel eyed her dads. "I love you both so much, but I really need to speak to Quinn privately right now." Her dads exchanged glances with each other and then nodded before tentatively walking back out into the hallway. They both smiled at Quinn and patted her shoulder on their way out.

Quinn made her way back over to Rachel's bedside. "Hi." She didn't know what else to say.

Rachel bit her lip. "I wanted to be alone with you."

Quinn looked to the side and then back at Rachel. "Yeah, I heard you tell your dads."

Rachel shook her head. "No.. I mean, last night. That's why I called you and nobody else. I wanted to be alone with you."

Quinn's face was a mixture of surprise and curiosity. "Oh. I- uh. Why?"

Rachel took a deep breath. "Quinn, I have always liked you. I just wanted to be close to you. It was always so difficult at school, but there were some moments where I knew we connected and I thought that if I could be alone with you outside of school that we could have more of those moments. So when my car started sputtering on the side of the road, you were the only person I could think of that I wanted to come to my rescue. But, Quinn, I need to tell you something bigger than that."

Quinn gently smiled and nodded. "Tell me anything."

A tear rolled down Rachel's cheek. "I had this horrible dream, Quinn. Only I didn't know it was a dream until I woke up and saw you there. It was such an awful dream."

Quinn stroked Rachel's cheek. "It's okay, Rachel. Tell me what happened."

"You were in a car accident. Alone. And you.. you died. It was devastating. Everything felt empty and useless without you. I didn't know that you could feel your heart breaking in a dream, but you absolutely can. And I did. I thought I lost you, and when I thought that, it made me realize how much I l-love you, Quinn."

Quinn's eyes were wide and fixated on Rachel's face. "W-what?"

Rachel breathed in. "I love you, Quinn. So much. I always have."

Quinn sat there stunned for a moment. "Rachel, I.." she stopped abruptly and looked at Rachel's face, marveling at just how beautiful she was, even with that terrified look on her face. She leaned up and placed a soft kiss on Rachel's lips. "I love you, too."

Rachel smiled and wrapped her arms tight around Quinn. "I'm never losing you again, Quinn."

Quinn nuzzled Rachel's cheek and smiled. "Never."


End file.
